Baldur Brönnimann is rapidly building a reputation for his innovative programming and his mastery of contemporary scores. In April Brönnimann made his English National Opera debut in Olga Neuwirth’s adaptation of David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and in May he will conduct Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin at the Bergen Festival. He regularly conducts the major orchestras and new music ensembles in the UK and Europe and in 2007 he made his debut in Australia and New Zealand.
In a wide and eclectic range of repertoire, Brönnimann has conducted in many of Europe’s contemporary music festivals and series, including Berlin’s Ultraschall Festival, London’s Spitalfields Festival, Helsinki’s Music Nova Festival, Stockholm’s New Music Festival, Cologne’s MusikTriennale and Belfast’s Sonorities Festival, with groups such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain and Portugal’s Remix Ensemble, and has worked closely with many of today’s living composers, including Brett Dean, Unsuk Chin, Jonathan Harvey.
Brönnimann has also established a reputation as a superb programme builder, and as such has devised and conducted some inspired programmes for orchestras across the world, for example Adelaide Symphony with Hakan Hardenberger (Gershwin, Zimmerman, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky), Finland’s Tampere Symphony with James Ehnes (Stravinsky, Barber, Bartok), Porto Symphony (Ives, Stravinsky, Varghas, Harvey). His style of presenting his programmes from the podium is much admired and has won him great acclaim on both sides of the world.
Earlier in the season Brönnimann made his debut with the London Sinfonietta, conducting two programmes of music by Unsuk Chin and Isang Yun in Italy’s Settembre Musica Festival in Milan and Turin. He also returned to Porto to conduct Jonathan Harvey’s mammoth work Madonna of Winter and Spring. Later in the season he returns to the Philharmonia to conduct in their Music of Today series and to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (for his third visit in two years) for their flagship Masterworks series. Following on from his hugely successful debut with the Auckland Philharmonia last season, he is returning there in June. Brönnimann is also committed to his work with young musicians and during this season has conducted the Australian Youth Orchestra, Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony in Cambridge and The Marriage of Figaro at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Brönnimann has conducted and recorded with most of the BBC orchestras in the UK, in both contemporary and standard repertoire and last season he side-stepped out of the formal classical music scene for a week conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Northern Sinfonia on the UK tour of the harpist and folk singer Joanna Newsom.
Brönnimann trained at the Basel Music Academy, before holding a fellowship at the UK’s Royal Northern College of Music, where he worked with Kent Nagano and Sir Edward Downes amongst others. He now regularly returns to the College in his capacity as Visiting Tutor in Conducting.
Baldur Brönnimann is represented by Intermusica.
April 2008 / 465 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
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